Video means China student being murdered again and again: mother

(Reuters) - The mother of a Chinese student who was killed and dismembered in one of Canada's most grisly crimes says the fact a video of the butchery was posted on the Internet means her son "is being murdered again and again".

Zhigui Du, whose 32-year-old son, Jun Lin, died in Montreal in May, said the crime was destroying the image of Canada as a safe and peaceful place.

Police allege that a small-time porn actor, Luka Magnotta, murdered Lin, dismembered his body and posted a gory video of the crime online. He faces first degree murder charges.

"The most unbearable pain for me is that the video got posted on the Internet. People watched it over and over and over. It's like my son is being murdered again and again," Du told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp in an interview shown late on Monday.

"Why did he have to suffer so much? Why was that brutal video put on the Internet? What a disaster and huge pain for our family. My lovely boy, so alive, and killed in that way."

Lin's hands and feet were mailed to the offices of political parties in Ottawa and to schools in Vancouver, while his torso was found in a pile of garbage. Police later discovered his head in a Montreal park.

Magnotta, who was arrested in Germany early last month and deported to Canada, pleaded not guilty to all charges. His pre-trial hearing is due to begin next March. Du said this was too long to wait.

"This heinous crime happened in Canada. It's made me reconsider what kind of place this is," she said.

"I'm afraid of taking the elevator by myself, I cannot sleep without my husband being around. Sometimes, when I walk on the street, looking at people, I feel like everyone looks like Magnotta. I'm living in fear."

Lin was excited when he moved from China to study at Montreal's Concordia University, she said.

"He said, 'People in Canada are so nice, everyone has come from different places, there's no racism here'. He told me not to worry about his safety, this was a very safe country for immigrants," she said.

Du and her husband come from the city of Wuhan in central China. She said she did not know where they would bury Lin.

"Originally, we were thinking since our son loved it here so much, if this is where he wanted to be, we must let him be buried here," she said.

"But now ... all our relatives and extended families keep pressuring us to bring our son back to China. We Chinese have an old saying: 'Fallen leaves must go back to the root of the tree.' We're caught in the middle and really don't know what to do."